ask Mama if she would like a soda water.
The night wore on, and the talk turned to the war, and to despairing, at least from Gill. Not Walker, who seemed a sensible man: ‘Oh, war will be bad for vaudeville, take it from me—but we’ll do better in polite vaudeville than the burlesque houses will, when their audiences disappear. My wife reminds me that when the men go off to war we’ll still have the women and children, anxious to forget their troubles.’
Already, Aurora considered, they were seeing this very thing at the Muse.
‘Unpleasant bully-ragging in Europe,’ Julius pronounced, peering from his fug. ‘Weeping sore, can be lanced. Strike hard and sharp.’
How Julius loves to look wise, Aurora thought. But she had begun to despise everyone. A darkness had slid over the world.
True Pain
The party broke up around four without anything secured, as far as Aurora could see. They were the last to leave the dimming Shasta. Mayhew’s flourishing signature on the bill, and a fat tip in bills pressed into the maître d’s hand, seemed to console the staff.
The elevator struggled up, first to Mama’s floor to let her totter out, then to theirs, doors clanging as they shut and opened, even though Mayhew put out a gloved hand to damper the noise.
‘You seemed to get along very well with Walker,’ he said, throwing his gloves on the table in the hall. ‘He’s hired Julius. Did he boast? Given him dates in Winnipeg as well, the remainder of the year. Shows his lack of discrimination, I suppose.’
Mayhew was jealous; Aurora had had to turn down her lamps at dinner. Irrational, since he’d been using her to sweeten the table; and now it likely meant a sleepless night while he railed at her misbehaviour and then took her with some force. Sometimes that was good, the race of it making her blood thump, but tonight she was unaccountably tired and only wanted sleep.
He came to take her cloak and held her, his fingers pressing underneath her arm so as to leave no bruise visible onstage. He was never entirely blind to practicality.
‘You’re hurting me,’ she said, gently pulling away. You had to be careful not to escalate things, with Mayhew.
‘Oh, it’s a world of hurt,’ he threw at her, and crashed the cloak onto the table as he stalked into the parlour, ignoring the lateness of the hour and the sleeping tenants below them.
Turn it aside to something else. She went to the piano, and lifted the keyboard lid as if she would play to soothe him.
‘How much did you give Julius?’ she said lightly.
‘I paid him back. He’d lent me a century—told his wife it was only fifty.’ The electric candles at the fireplace went on. Mayhew pushed with his boot at the half-burned log in the grate, and bent to light it again.
Aurora’s index finger touched a note, a note, a note. Very softly. ‘With sixteen months’ interest?’
Mayhew cracked a laugh. ‘No! Only Julius’s self-interest. The hope I’ll hire him again someday.’
She sat on the piano bench, where he could not comfortably follow her. Every inch of her body was weary and sore, and she had a strange taste in her mouth.
Mayhew turned from the fire. ‘I’m taking Les Très Belles off the bill,’ he said abruptly, with no softening introduction. ‘You’ll be the better for a transformation of some kind. Get involved in another vaude house, perhaps—you can work with Walker, or Gill.’
‘Why?’ She bit her lip. She knew why, all the reasons.
‘Give the Muse’s audience a goddamned rest, for one thing,’ he said.
Aurora turned her head to see his face in the firelight.
He stayed by the mantel, staring back at her. ‘You can take a break for four months. I’m working on the Spokane deal. We’ll see how that pans out. In the meantime, you’ll have to economize,’ he said, closing the subject. He poured another whiskey and headed for the bathroom.
Four months—stuck in the apartment with nothing to do, and with less money! The collapse must be closer than she’d suspected. And she did not see how the Spokane deal could possibly come together.
Her trailing skirt caught on a carpet tack as she went to the bedroom—and when she pulled, it ripped. Another thing to fix. Mama would do it. The dressing table was tidy, Annie and Berthe had been in that afternoon. They would not be able to afford to have the maids every other day. Once a week, perhaps, at first, and then